Filip Mazurczak interviews Halina Szpilman, widow of Wladyslaw Szpilman, subject of the Roman Polanski film "The Pianist" here.Excerpt: Szpilman, who was of course Jewish, was very attached to Poland, his fatherland. "He was very attached to Poland and could not imagine life elsewhere. My husband always sat on the chair where you are sitting right now and got very upset when a guest sat there, because he believed that was his place. This was his place, and Władysław believed that he lived there and he was born there. He spent his whole life in Poland, including the worst period, that of German occupation. Some people found it strange that he could have lived in the same place where he lost his family. In any case, he was very strongly connected to his fatherland."

An interview between Filip Mazurczak and Antony Polonsky covers several key questions in Polish Jewish Relations. Full text here.Excerpt:"There is now a clearer understanding that the mass murder of the Jews during the Second World War was initiated and for the most part carried out by the Nazi regime in Germany and by the German people who largely followed its lead. It is also understood that the reason for siting death camps on Polish soil is that this was where most of European Jewry was to be found. In addition, it was far from the front and also away from Germany and Western Europe."

Recently Karen Armstrong, a faux scholar beloved of the left, accused Bill Maher and Sam Harris of paving the way for another Holocaust. I was very troubled by this and American Thinker published my piece today expressing that offense. You can read the piece at American Thinker here or at my other blog here.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

A document identified at the top of the page as a "student handout." Milaca, Minnesota. K-12, that is kindergarten through 12th grade. "A relatively large number of Poles collaborated with the Nazis." Not so in France. "Many French citizens found it difficult to accept that Jews were being deported and began helping Jews...Germans realized they couldn't rely on the French.""Most Dutch were reluctant to cooperate" with the Nazis...The German occupation of the Netherlands is considered the most ruthless in Western Europe" [emphasis added -- the Nazi occupation of Poland was the most ruthless, but Poland is not in Western Europe.]"Many Italians assisted Jews." Pope Pius XII is seen as a silent collaborator. Entire document here.

Friday, November 28, 2014

It's always hard for me to explain to people what "Bieganski" is about. It's not a nationalistic rah rah Poland book. It's a book about stereotypes. People sometimes then ask, "Oh, so you are saying that there are no Polish anti-Semites or antisemitism?" And the answer is "No, of course not. Of course there are Polish anti-Semites and there is Polish antisemitism. Rather 'Bieganski' points out that stereotypes are used in discussions of Polish anti-Semites and Polish antisemitism in a way that is not helpful." I just stumbled across a fairly typical example on the web.In May, 2014, the Jewish week published an article about someone who "scrawled" a swastika on a transformer in Bialystok. You can read the article here.Such an event calls for rational discussion on how to combat antisemitism. In the comments section, one finds this: "I would curse this miserable country, but it already is. It is filled with Poles." And this, "Our only defense, our only solution....a strong and united Israel to serve as warning to anti-semitic people the world over that their time will not come again." And this "When will we Jews finally turn our backs on this poisonous little land?"There's a degree of hate there that needs to be understood before we can move forward.

You can find all sorts of weird things on the web ... including Answers.com's made-up version of where the Dumb Polak stereotype comes from. Where do people come up with this stuff? And why do they pretend that they know something when they don't? Luckily many people are aware enough not to believe everything they read on the web. You can read the full Answers.com invented history of Polak jokes here.Here is an excerpt:"The phrase 'dumb Polack' generated after WWII. When Hitler's army invaded Poland, the Nazi soldiers were ordered to hunt down and kill any person of intelligence in the country. This included: authors, painters, teachers, and any other person with a high level of education. With all the intelligent people of Poland murdered, the phrase came to be because the "dumb" citizens were left to pass on their genes to future generations. Sad but true."

The other night I re-watched "The Proud and the
Profane," a big, blowsy, fun, old-fashioned, bodice-ripper melodrama from
1956 starring William Holden, Deborah Kerr, Thelma Ritter and Dewey Martin.
William Holden is Colin Black, a "half-breed" – what an ugly word –
lieutenant colonel. Deborah Kerr is Lee Ashley, a war widow and Red Cross worker.
They meet in New Caledonia in 1943, during World War II.

"The Proud and the Profane" is like a Douglas
Sirk movie, although it was not directed by Sirk, but by George Seaton, more
famous for lighter fare like "Miracle on 34th Street." In
Douglas Sirk movies, passion wrestles with social convention. Just so here. Lee
is all but virginal and Colin pursues her like a panting hound after a scared
bunny. There is an unintentionally hilarious sequence where Lee and Colin begin
a conversation in street clothes, continue in more casual attire, and finally conclude
their conversation while wearing bathing suits. This is no doubt meant to
symbolize their letting their guard down.

Another symbolic gesture is Colin's stick. He carries a
stick that may be a riding crop, though he's never seen on a horse, or an arrow,
symbolizing his Indian ancestry – I'm not sure. He beats the stick against his
palm a lot. Okay, maybe it's just a phallic symbol.

Though it is not an artistically or intellectually
ambitious film, it features one of the most arresting, provocative, and
squirm-inducing scenes I've ever seen in any movie.

Lee is Little Miss Perfect: gorgeous, spotless, polite,
above-it-all. You assume that her marriage to her late husband Howard Ashley,
who died in the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal, was a perfect marriage.

Towards the end of the film Lee goes to visit the
cemetery for American soldiers who died fighting the Japanese. The cemetery is
heartbreaking – it's a vast expanse of white crosses and stars of David under
the tropical sun. You can't help but think of, shed a tear for, and be grateful
to all the American GIs who sacrificed their lives so that we could enjoy all
we do.

There is a solider hanging around the cemetery. His
entire unit was killed at Bloody Ridge. He spends his days tending their graves
and talking to them. He points to two graves. He says something like
"There's Martini. There's Goldberg. They didn't like each other. They're
getting along fine, now." As he speaks of these traumatic events, this
soldier maintains a smile. It's eerie.

He doesn't know who Lee is. He thinks she's just a Red
Cross worker. He speaks freely about Lee's late husband, Howard. He reveals
that Howard was miserable in his marriage to Lee. Finally after he has said
enough to completely turn Lee's life, heart, and guts upside down, he asks her
name. She says, "Mrs. Howard Ashley." The soldier is gobsmacked. It's
an amazing scene.

There's another surprisingly relevant aspect to this
movie. "The Proud and the Profane" is based on a novel,
"Magnificent Bastards." That title alludes to a thrust of the plot.
Colin Black is not just a horndog chasing after super-pure Lee Ashley. He is a
soldier, with all that that implies. He is passionate, brutal, direct. He
reminds Lee that one has to express one's dark side to do what war demands:
kill people and break things. The movie's job is to make virginal Lee
appreciate earthy Colin, and vice versa.

In addition to these big themes, you get to watch two
beautiful people chase each other around swaying palms and across sandy
beaches. In fact Kerr lolls lustfully on a beach in a bathing suit in this
film, just as she does in "From Here to Eternity." Holden's great
beauty is marred by the heavy makeup he wears in order to look Indian. For me,
a Golden Age film buff, the heavy makeup just adds to the film's corny appeal.

Dewey Martin plays the minor character Eddie Wodcik.
Wodcik is a ghetto kid. He is impulsive, not very bright, not in control of his
feelings, violent, ineffectual, tragic, and doomed. Eddie had grown up in a
ghetto. He was an orphan. His sister died in a tenement fire. Lee looks like
his sister so he becomes irresistibly drawn to her. He follows her around like
a puppy and beats up anyone who insults her. When he sees that Colin has hurt
Lee, he tries to stab Colin. He fails. Colin is the hero, after all. Colin
hears Eddie sneaking up on him and trips him. Eddie later dies in combat.

Eddie had to be a Polak. The characteristics that the
filmmaker wanted for this character mesh perfectly with the Polak stereotype.

I have chatted with Katarzyna via email and I am very
encouraged by her attention to detail. I wrote "Bieganski" while treading
a razor's edge. I strove to tell even controversial truths in a way that might be heard over the din of competing victimologies and prejudices. I prayed
that Jacek would find a translator who would walk that same tightrope in the
Polish language translation.

I asked Katarzyna her feelings about the charged topic of
the book. She wrote back, "I enjoy translating your book, partly because
it reflects my feelings about Polish-Jewish relations. I feel that Poland
hasn't been given a voice or attention that isn't negative in some way, but at
the same time, we're not blameless." I very much appreciate her reply.

I wrote to Kira Nemirovsky of Academic Studies Press, the
publisher of the English language version of the book, to discuss the Polish
language version. I mentioned to her that some have objected to the cover as it
exists now. In fact it was I who had originally suggested the current cover, as I felt it encapsulated both
of the stereotypes the book describes: the lumpen Polak Bieganski and the
crafty Jewish Shylock. Unfortunately some readers interpreted the cover as an
endorsement of those stereotypes. For that reason, I think another cover might
be in order. Some possibilities are below. If you care to, please express a
preference in the comments section. Thank you.

March 27, 2015. Jacek Tokarski of Wydawnictwo Wysoki Zamek has given me a new date for the publication of "Bieganski" in Poland in Polish. The new date is also in 2015. I hope it comes together this time!

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Can a person's
character ever be guessed at from a single photograph? I am probably by no
means unique when I say that I have always found faces fascinating and am invariably
drawn to the portraits in any art gallery. I don't think I'd be re-discovering
the wheel if I said that people tend to subconsciously make snap judgements
about others based solely on their looks and in fact I have no doubt that
scholarly volumes have been written on this very subject. So when we do
discover biographical information about the person depicted in a portrait, for
instance, it can sometimes be very surprising.

If I say that the
girl in the photo above was born in 1925, would it be possible to match her image
to any of the following scenarios, on the basis of what little information is
available in a single picture?

Scenario 1: Anna is
from a Polish-Jewish musical family, born and raised in Krakow. She survived
the first part of the war in hiding with her mother at the home of a Catholic
widow, but was later captured by the Germans and sent for labour to Bavaria.
After the war, she became well-known as a pianist and accompanist among the
Polish emigracja in London and is now
in her 89th year, loved and respected by all who know her.

Scenario 2: Anna was
from a Catholic Kresy family from eastern
Poland, in what is now Ukraine. After the Soviet invasion, she was transported
to the Gulag with her parents and sisters for years of hard labour. Her parents
did not survive. After the Sikorski-Maisky Pact, she joined the Anders Army,
went through the Middle East, Egypt, Palestine and Italy before arriving in
Liverpool, England. She then married and emigrated to Canada, where she raised
a family and pursued her first love of photography, exhibiting her work at many
Canadian and American art galleries. Her eyesight failed her in later years and
she turned to writing poetry. She died in 2013.

Scenario 3: Anna,
originally from Cremona in Italy had a Polish father (a former Hallerczyk) and French mother. She was a
brilliant student, spoke five languages fluently and studied psychology in
Bologna. She worked undercover for British Intelligence during the war, joining
the resistance in Holland. In 1947 she emigrated to Brazil, where she gained recognition
for her work in the field of clinical psychology. She gave her name to an
institute in Sao Paolo. She died in 2006.

Scenario 4: Anna is
an Anglo-Irish actress and poet who starred in many English and American film
and TV productions, most famously as Madame Paderewska in "Upstairs,
Downstairs". The real Polish connection in her own life was that her first
husband was a minister in the Polish wartime government-in-exile. It was
recently revealed that she was one of the code breakers at Bletchley Park. She
lives in an actors' retirement home in Hampshire where she is visited by her
many grandchildren.

Anyone who recognizes
Anna Zakrzewska from the photograph will know that none of the above scenarios
apply to her. I came across her name in a list of notable members of the Armia Krajowa
when I happened to be reading about the liberation in August 1944 of the
Gęsiówka concentration camp which the Germans had built in Warsaw.

This episode gets
scant attention in the mainstream English-speaking media, although most Poles
will know that it was the AK, the Polish resistance army, which carried out the
attack on the camp, freeing over three hundred prisoners – most of them Jewish –
in the process.

The particular unit responsible
for this action was the famous Zośka Battalion of which Anna Zakrzewska was a
member. Reading about her, I couldn't tell whether she was actually involved in
the attack on the camp at Gęsiówka or not. Her face had caught my attention
perhaps for the simple reason that she bore a passing resemblance to someone I
used to know many years ago or perhaps she just had the kind of looks which
would have graced magazine covers in any other age. What was she like in the
days before war broke out? What were her hopes and dreams?

Wikipedia lists some
notable members of the Zośka Battalion. A very few did survive the Warsaw
Uprising and lived on into old age but I was struck by the number of them who
were killed. All of them died at the time of life at which many young people
would have been enjoying a peaceful life of study at some college or university
instead of being involved in the horrors of urban warfare. The sequel to the
actual insurrection, as we know, was the crushing of Warsaw and its citizens
with unexampled brutality.

The little
information there is available about Anna Zakrzewska tells us she was cut down by
German gunfire during the uprising in August 1944.

She was just eighteen
years old when, as happened with so many others of her generation, the
possibility of any kind of life was taken from her.

Danusha asked me to
write a few words about myself. I suppose I would describe myself as a Brit of
Polish descent. I was born in Worcester in 1949 and now live in London. My
mother was painter Halina Karska and my father military historian Tadeusz
Kryska-Karski. They both found themselves in England after the war, having
followed the convoluted route taken by many Polish citizens whose lives were
thrown into turmoil by the events of 1939. My grandfather Franciszek Karski was
reportedly killed at Katyn, although I have had conflicting information about a
Franciszek Karski who did, indeed, perish in the USSR, except not at Katyn but
Uzbekistan, having already enlisted in the Anders Army.

For myself, I lived
in Munich, Germany from 1957 to 1966, where my parents – primarily my father –
worked for Radio Free Europe. Returning to England, I studied for a German and
English degree at the University of London (Queen Mary College) and after a
fairly hectic and varied working life am now retired and catching up on films
and books and writing the occasional essay and radio drama. I am married and we
have one son.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

"Abu Huraira reported that the Messenger of Allah
(may peace be upon him) said: I have been given superiority over the other
prophets in six respects: I have been given words which are concise but
comprehensive in meaning; I have been helped by terror (in the hearts of
enemies): spoils have been made lawful to me: the earth has been made for me
clean and a place of worship; I have been sent to all mankind and the line of
prophets is closed with me. (Sahih Muslim, Book 004, Number 1062, 1063, 1066,
1067)"

Sunday, November 2, 2014

I just received an email from a fellow scholar who is
working on antisemitism. He asked for my thoughts. I typed up the post, below,
very quickly.

Anyone concerned about antisemitism needs to realize that
the world is changing rapidly on this topic.

Many of my students are black, Hispanic, first
generation, and not at all acculturated into mainstream American life. They
know hip-hop and they have street smarts but they don't know who John Adams was.
They haven't been socialized with the kind of shame that was widespread in
American culture after cultural leaders like Hollywood director George Stevens witnessed
and filmed the liberation of concentration camps. Many of my students don't
know, and more importantly don't feel the words "Never again."

Many of my students are often openly and unashamedly anti-Semitic.
They take it for granted that Jews blew up the World Trade Center. They say so
without any shame or hesitance. They aren't aware that there is any reason to
feel shame or hesitance for saying such a thing.

The antisemitism they pick up often comes from inner city
sources like the Nation of Islam and Muslims who inhabit the inner city
alongside them. It is my subjective impression that antisemitism is stronger
among African Americans, even those not affiliated with the Nation of Islam.

Anyone working on antisemitism right now needs to know
that antisemitism is rife in current Muslim American culture.

This is my subjective impression. I was born in, and
currently live in, Passaic County, which, I have read, has the second highest
Muslim population in the US. I do not know if that statistic is accurate. I do
know many Muslims.

Very nice Muslims have looked me right in the eye and
told me that Jews are responsible for the majority of the world's ills. Have
told me that Jews are responsible for everything that goes wrong in the Muslim
world. Jews are behind ISIS. Jews were behind Mubarak. Very nice Muslims,
people I consider friends, have looked me right in the eye and told me that
when Muslims are ready, someday, they will kill entire populations of Jews. All
the Jews in Israel, or maybe in the world.

I emphasize that nice people have said these things to me
because no one should be so naïve as to assume that genocidal hatred of Jews
and utterly irrational Jewish conspiracy theories are limited to screaming
extremists. They are part of everyday life among many nice Muslims.

How many? I don't know. I haven't done the research. I
just did a quick Google search and found a web page that includes the following
quote:

"From the study, it became clear that the Muslims
interviewed were more anti-Semitic than Christians in the United States and
Canada. The average or mean test scores endorsing negative Jewish stereotypes –
after statistically separating out anti-Israel sentiment items – were more than
double those of North American Christians. When separating culture from
religion, Arab Muslims came out as the most anti-Semitic. Arab Christians and
Non-Arab Muslims from Bosnia and Pakistan were less so, yet still anti-Semitic.
Mainstream North American Christians were not very anti-Semitic at all."

I can't vouch for this study or this page. It's just
something I found doing a Google search. Here is a link.

I strongly recommend Neil J Kressel's book "The Sons
of Pigs and Apes" review here.

I also recommend Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of
Islamic Antisemitism" review here.

I am a non-Jew who is horrified by antisemitism. I am
supportive of Israel – see my essay "Coming Out As Pro-Israel on
Facebook" here.
Many Jewish authors and speakers lose me – lose my support, my attention, and
my interest, lose me as an ally – as soon as they open their mouths. Why? Because
they are not so much about fighting antisemitism as about bashing and smearing
Christianity.

This is a huge mistake on a factual level and a tactical
level.

Jews make a mistake when they conflate antisemitism and
Christianity. And Jews do it a lot. They do it because doing so is an
identity-firming aid. As a minority in a largely Christian world, many Jews
decide, "We are the folks who don't celebrate Christmas, and, further, the
folks who celebrate Christmas are inferior, and are out to get us."

Melanie Philips lost me with her June, 2014 article in
Commentary entitled "Jesus was a Palestinian: The Return of Christian
Antisemitism." I knew she was trying to say something important, something
I care about. I could not grok her message because I was so turned off by her gratuitous
and false anti-Christian prejudice.

A very good Facebook friend lost me when she posted a web
page that claimed that Catholics in Poland used to use Christmas as an excuse
to murder Jews. The web page tried to look authentic. It purported to be
recounting genuine history. It was a Jewish cultural website. I sent the link
to Antony Polonsky, himself Jewish and the premier historian of Polish Jews. He
said that the page was false.

My friend who posted the link to this bogus page is
herself a highly educated woman. She's a physician. Yet she uncritically
assumed that a made up story about evil Polish Catholics was true, without any
evidence to back it up.

Those concerned about antisemitism should educate
themselves about Christianity. There are verses in the New Testament that are
critical of Jews; these verses are comparable to verses critical of Jews in the
Old Testament. In fact the Old Testament verses are harsher. This makes sense;
the authors of the New Testament were Jews themselves, with the possible exception
of Luke, who may or may not have been Jewish. There are other verses interpreted
to mean that the chosen-ness of Jews is unchanging (Romans 11:29). There is
much discussion of these matters; the discussion means that disagreement is
possible.

There are no verses in the New Testament that call on
Christians to murder Jews, and Christians who have done so have done so in contradiction
to the New Testament. Popes, bishops, and local priests have repeatedly
commanded those Christians who were killing Jews to stop doing so.

Christian crimes against Jews have always been specific to
a given set of geographic, historic, and economic circumstances. At the same
time that Spain was a bad place for Jews, equally Catholic Poland was a good place
for Jews.

European Christians who harmed Jews did so not in obedience
to the New Testament, which counsels love, but rather more typically in
response to an economic caste system. I hope anyone interested in antisemitism
will read my own book, "Bieganski."

I think that those who want to fight antisemitism should
educate themselves about Christianity and Christian antisemitism to better
prepare themselves for the fight. I also think they should do so in order
better to understand Muslim antisemitism.

Compare and contrast the Koran, hadith, and the example
of Mohammed with the New Testament and the example of Jesus. Jesus never killed
a Jew. Mohammed killed, tortured, raped, and enslaved Jews. Mohammed is Islam's
"perfect example, worthy of emulation." The Koran describes Allah
turning Jews into monkeys and pigs. A famous hadith, or saying of Mohammed, reports
that the time will come when stones and trees will order Muslims to kill Jews
hiding behind them.

There is no analog to the Good Samaritan story in the
Koran. The Good Samaritan story, of course, demonstrates the Christian concept
of universal brotherhood and love.

As for the myth that Islam was a tolerant place for Jews,
quoting Wikipedia "Mark Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at
Princeton University, in his Under Crescent and Cross, calls the idealized
interfaith utopia a 'myth' that was first promulgated by Jewish historians such
as Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century as a rebuke to Christian countries for
their treatment of Jews."

I mention these facts for this reason: If you think
battling Christian antisemitism prepares you for battling Islamic antisemitism,
you are naïve. Christendom has had leaders who preached against antisemitism.
Christendom upholds scripture that counsels love. Christianity's founder was a
Jew who killed no one. You confront a different reality in the Muslim world.

Some people conflate Christianity with Nazism. There is
more about that in "Bieganski." The conflation of Christianity with
Nazism is a big lie that distorts history. And it's more than that. It's a
tactical error for those who want to fight antisemitism. People are amazed that
antisemitism is rife on college campuses and among the Politically Correct, atheist
left. They should not be amazed. If you say "Antisemitism equals
Christianity," all atheists are absolved. I know people who are self-righteous,
anti-fascist leftists who hate Jews and want Israel to be destroyed. They don't
see themselves as anti-Semitic at all, because they equate antisemitism with
Christianity, and they are atheists.

One last thing. We tend to be blinded by the concept of
universal human progress. There is this idea that things are always getting
better. This process is inevitable. This idea is so pervasive people don't even
realize that they are subject to it. It is ingrained in language, eg, "That
was then; this is now."

Bibi Netanyahu revealed that he is subject to the fantasy
of universal human progress. In a September, 2012 UN speech, he contrasted the
medieval – bad – with the modern – good. I wish I could grab Netanyahu by the
lapels and remind him that there was nothing more medieval than the university,
and nothing more modern than Nazism.

Universal human progress is a chimera. In fact the very
worst things that we could imagine could happen tomorrow; they could happen
right now. As many Jews as were murdered by the Nazis could be murdered again. There
is a critical mass of hate in the world right now. We trivialize it at our
peril.

I wish I could end on a more positive note.

Oh, let me add this positive Bible verse, "I will
bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples
on earth will be blessed through you."